A Place in the Digital Humanities : Using GIS to better understand humanities geographies.

1st International Symposium on Digital Humanities for Japanese Arts and Cultures - Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto

Conference

Conference

1st International Symposium on Digital Humanities for Japanese Arts and Cultures

City

Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto

Period

27/02/09 → 28/02/09

Abstract

The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has become well established in historical research, especially in those aspects of history concerned with the analysis of statistical sources such as the census, or cartographic ones such as old maps. This work has had a number of successes in demonstrating the importance of geography in historical analyses. More recently there have been calls for GIS to be used across the humanities. If this is to happen approaches to GIS need to be developed that allow it to be used with texts, the type of source most widely used in the humanities. This paper will review how GIS has been used in historical research to date and demonstrate how it can be applied to new disciplines such as Literary Studies.